Thank you to all who submitted a story. Keep sending us your kitchen disaster stories.
-Staff

When I was in high school and learning to cook, my parents went out of
town for the weekend. Being the good older sister, I decided that I
would cook breakfast for my brothers and sister. I heated a pan of
grease to fry eggs. I left it on the stove too long and it caught fire
and scorched the cabinets. The same day, I also tried my hand at
cooking a frozen pizza. Needless to say...it caught fire too! I had
forgotten to take the cardboard backing off of the frozen pizza before
putting it in the oven.

I still am reminded by my family of my cooking disaster. And guess
what? Thanksgiving is at my house this year!

Kelly B.
Childress, Texas

When I was a newlywed, I came upon a recipe in a cookbook called "Jerry
Lewis Chocolate Cake". I had some overripe bananas that I wanted to get
rid of - so I decided to put them into the batter. Then the recipe
called for sour milk. I didn't have any, so I looked up how to make
milk sour -- which was to add vinegar. Then I had a pound of nuts that
I threw in. The cake had a strange aroma -- the combination of vinegar
and bananas. It also weighed a ton.

It took my husband one week to eat the cake. It was like eating lead --
not to mention the taste was atrocious. I couldn't live this episode
down for a long time.

Ann G., Texas Cooking reader

Send submissions regarding cooking disasters, and other humor to
moc.gnikoocsaxet@nibrof_solkim.

For the most part, these are true stories from our readers. Here's the latest
(and this one includes a good recipe):

From Charlotte B., Antioch, California

Years ago, my widowed mother-in-law, who was an accomplished cook, came
to our house for Christmas. She arrived a few days early, so several
days' worth of meals needed to be faultlessly prepared. One night, I
trotted out an easy favorite of mine: clay pot stew. This couldn't be
simpler: tenderize the beef using unseasoned tenderizer, cut it into
cubes, dredge it as if you are going to fry it, but then don't. Put the
beef into the presoaked clay cooker, add cubed potatoes, chopped mild
onions, carrots or mixed frozen veggies if you have them. Salt and
pepper this, pour white wine over, and bake for slightly more than an
hour in a preheated 350 degree oven.

When this usually reliable dish was served, an unexpected thing happened.
My daughter, then a teenager, toyed around with a rather large, unidentifiable
bit of the stew on her plate, then picked up the offending tidbit on her
fork and threw it onto the floor in a bit of a panic. My heart sank -- what
was it -- a mouse???? The scene was then exacerbated by the actions of our
large, old orange tomcat, who trotted over and began to examine the
"offal" interestedly. It was not a Polaroid moment.

Resignedly, I put down my napkin, got up, fetched a paper towel, and grabbed
the discarded stew lump. It proved to be a fully-dredged and well-cooked Golden
Fleece cloth, the kind you scrub your nonstick pans with. This one was
extremely well worn with age, pretty much missing its bumpy surface,
and, in short, no thing of beauty. Somehow it had just slipped into the
flour and had been included in the feast. This has never been forgotten, and
is recalled at length at every Christmas gathering.

It quite tops the time when I was rushing to get my child's birthday cake
decorated (she wanted the standard little girl's doll cake) and I stuck a new Barbie
in the cooked and presumably, cooled, cake skirt before frosting the whole thing,
only to discover later that the cake still had enough residual warmth to permanently
cripple Barbie's legs. She looked as if she'd been run over by a train. This memory,
naturally, resurfaces every year at that child's birthday.

From Anonymous in Could-Be-Anywhere, TX

Being an old chuckwagon cook from way back, I was invited to cook for a bunch of them
Civil war re-enacter types, Yankees at that, a couple years back at a small village near Waco.
Well sir, I cooked eggs, and sausage, and beans, and cornbread, and stew, and enough
coffee to float a boat. Sometime late in the day, I began to run out of stuff. I mean,
the wagon was down to bare bones. A friend came by with an offer to help. I said, "Man, I
need stuff to cook, go get me some chili or something." He high-tailed it off to WalMart
or some such place and came back in a while with a couple gallon cans of generic chilli --
the kind with black and white labels. I stood back and opened it, poured it into a big
old bean pot and hid the cans. After adding a couple tomatoes, a few leftover onions
and a hand full of jalapeño's, I poked up the fire and yelled for them Yankees.
They finished it off to the last seed. And to this day they proclaim me to be
the best darn chili cook in central Texas. And don't print my real name.

From B.G., Native, expatiate Texan and reader

When I was a newlywed 18 years ago, I decided to have my beloved younger brother Andy over to eat lunch with me. I made a quiche, using one of the
newfangled already-made piecrusts-in-a-pan. Feeling very pleased with
myself, I poured the ham/egg/cheese mixture into the piepan and put it in
the oven. When the quiche was done, I took it out of the oven and prepared
to cut it. But the knife didn't slide cleanly through the crust! No
matter...I finally succeeded in getting a piece cut, and presented it to
Andy. He took a big bite and immediately spat it back out onto his plate,
along with the waxed paper that was INSIDE THE QUICHE. I had not even
noticed the waxed paper covering on top of the crust, and had baked it,
along with the quiche mixture, in the oven!

This happened 18 years ago on Montreal Street in Dallas, and if you think
this little incident has been forgotten yet, then there ain't no armadillos
in Fort Stockton:).

Oh, and by the way--I have made about three quiches since then (I wonder
why?!)...

Thank you for your comments, BG. Overlooking key items seems to have haunted me throughout
my cooking career as well. On a side note, recently while moving to a new apartment, I decided
to seal my bulk Texmati rice in a plastic airtight container. Several weeks later, I decided
to make rice for dinner. I had not opened the container since then. Shortly after scooping
out one cup of rice into boiling water, I noticed that moisture had condensed inside the clear
container. On closer look the rice was filled with tiny, pink worms -- moving and
alive. Mmmmmm! Resealing the rice had created a little biosphere with water, food and
oxygen. Fortunately, the worm rice was never served, and my lesson in proper storage of bulk
grains will forever be etched in my memory. - Lucas Everidge.